VATICAN CITY — A member of the Vatican diplomatic corps serving in Washington has been recalled to the Vatican where he is involved in a criminal investigation involving child pornography, the Vatican said.

People are seen outside the Vatican Embassy, or apostolic nunciature, in Washington in 2014. A member of the Vatican diplomatic corps serving in Washington has been recalled to the Vatican where he is involved in a criminal investigation involving child pornography, the Vatican said. (CNS photo/Tyler Orburn)

The Vatican press office said Sept. 15 that it was notified Aug. 21 by the U.S. State Department “of a possible violation of laws relating to child pornography images by a member of the diplomatic corps of the Holy See accredited to Washington.”

“The Holy See, following the practice of sovereign states, recalled the priest in question, who is currently in Vatican City,” the press office said.

The Associated Press reported that the State Department confirmed it had asked the Vatican to lift the official’s diplomatic immunity. It said that request was denied.

The Vatican said the priest’s identity and other details are covered by “investigative confidentiality” during the preliminary investigation stage. The Vatican yearbook lists the nuncio, Archbishop Christoph Pierre, and three priests as making up the diplomatic staff at the Washington nunciature.

After receiving the notification from the State Department, the Vatican said, “the Secretariat of State transmitted this information to the promoter of justice of the Vatican tribunal.” The promoter of justice is the Vatican’s chief prosecutor.

“The promoter of justice opened an investigation and has already commenced international collaboration to obtain elements relative to the case,” the Vatican said.

Greg Burke, director of the Vatican press office, said the investigation is concentrated on matters defined as “crimes against children” in the Vatican’s 2013 “Supplementary Norms on Criminal Law Matters.”

Specifically, he said, the investigation is referring to what the law defines as “child pornography,” which “means any representation, by whatever means, of a minor engaged in real or simulated explicit sexual activities as well as any representation of the sexual parts of a minor for primarily sexual purposes.”

Burke also referred reporters to section 10 of the supplementary norms, which discuss criminal penalties for a person found guilty of producing or selling and trading child pornography; in those cases Vatican law foresees a maximum of 12 years imprisonment and a fine of up to $299,000.

Contributing to this story was Junno Arocho Esteves at the Vatican.

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VATICAN CITY — The Institute for the Works of Religion, often referred to as the Vatican bank, made a profit of 36 million euros (about $40 million) in 2016, according to its annual report.

The institute held assets worth 5.7 billion euros at year’s end, which included deposits and investments from close to 15,000 clients, mostly Catholic religious orders around the world, Vatican offices and employees, and Catholic clergy.

The main entrance of the Institute for the Works of Religion, known colloquially as the Vatican bank, is seen at the Vatican May 31. Ernst von Freyburg, president of the bank, said its operations are sound but “our biggest issue is our reputation.” (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

Before the report’s release, the 2016 financial statements were audited by the firm Deloitte & Touche and were reviewed by the Commission of Cardinals overseeing the institute’s work.

According to a statement from the bank June 12, all of the profits will be turned over to the Holy See, with none being placed in the institute’s reserve account.

According to the report, most of the institute’s clients “are active in missions or perform charitable works at institutions such as schools, hospitals or refugee camps.” That work is conducted all over the world, including “in countries with very basic infrastructure and underdeveloped banking and payment systems,” which means they rely on the institute, particularly in transferring donations from wealthier nations to poorer ones.

“Measured by assets entrusted, the most important group of clients was religious orders. They accounted for more than half of our client base in 2016 (54 percent), followed by Roman Curia departments, Holy See Offices and nunciatures (11 percent),” the report said. Cardinals, bishops and other clergy make up about 8 percent of the client base, and another 8 percent is comprised of bishops’ conferences, dioceses and parishes.

In addition to deposits in money, the institute also holds “gold, silver, medals and precious coins” valued at close to 33 million euros. “Gold is mainly deposited with the U.S. Federal Reserve, while medals and precious coins are kept in the IOR vaults,” it said. IOR is the Italian acronym for the Institute for the Works of Religion.

VATICAN CITY — An agreement between the Holy See and France handed responsibility for the church that towers above Rome’s Spanish Steps to the French-founded Emmanuel Community.

The Trinita dei Monti church is pictured at the top of the Spanish Steps in Rome in this Dec. 8, 2010, file photo. An agreement signed July 25 between the Holy See and France handed responsibility for the Trinita dei Monti church and the adjoining convent to the Emmanuel Community. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

In a series of amendments signed July 25 between the Holy See and France, the Catholic community will run the Trinita dei Monti church and convent starting Sept. 1. The gardens, a school, a pilgrim welcoming center and all works of art on the property will also come under the community’s care.

The new amendments are part of an 1828 accord between the two states. The early 16th-century church had first been run since by the Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. But when the sisters were no longer able to continue their mission because of a lack of new vocations, a Paris-based monastic fraternity took over running the property and the church’s pastoral programs in 2006.

However, the Monastic Fraternities of Jerusalem, a small coed monastic community whose monks and nuns live and work in the heart of major cities, could no longer take responsibility for running the property for “internal organizational reasons,” said Philippe Zeller, the French ambassador to the Vatican.

The Emmanuel Community, the ambassador said in a written address July 25, is an international Catholic community recognized by the Holy See as a public association of the faithful. Founded in France in 1972, the community has almost 10,000 members, made up of lay and consecrated men and women as well as priests from about 60 countries.

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VATICAN CITY — A historic agreement signed between the Holy See and Palestine that supports a two-state solution in the Holy Land has gone into effect, the Vatican announced.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki reads his speech during a meeting at the Vatican June 26. The Vatican signed its first treaty with the “State of Palestine” June 26, calling for “courageous decisions” to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with a two-state solution. The agreement went into effect this week. (CNS photo/L’Osservatore Romano via Reuters)

“The agreement, consisting of a preamble and 32 articles, regards essential aspects of the life and activity of the Church in Palestine, while at the same time reaffirming the support for a negotiated and peaceful solution to the conflict in the region,” the Vatican said in a statement Jan. 2.

The two parties signed the Comprehensive Agreement between the Holy See and the State of Palestine at the Vatican June 26. The accord focuses mostly on the status and activity of the Catholic Church in the Palestinian territories. It assures the church “juridical recognition” and “guarantees” for its work and institutions in there.

The Comprehensive Agreement follows up on the Basic Agreement, signed in 2000, between the Holy See and the Palestine Liberation Organization, and was the result of years-long bilateral negotiations.

Although the Comprehensive Agreement is considered as the first official recognition of the state of Palestine by the Holy See, the Vatican has referred to the State of Palestine since January 2013. The Vatican also praised the United Nations’ recognition of Palestinian sovereignty in 2012.

VATICAN CITY — Under new reporting procedures that are more in line with international accounting standards, the Holy See reported $1 billion in net assets that had never been reported before and in a consolidated form.

The Vatican’s figures for 2014 also showed a continued budget deficit on the part of the Roman Curia and nearly double the profits brought in by entities falling under the separate Vatican City State budget. (CNS file)

The Vatican’s final figures for 2014 also showed a continued budget deficit on the part of the Roman Curia and nearly double the profits brought in by entities falling under the separate Vatican City State budget.

In fact, the profits coming from the Vatican Museums, “cultural activities” and investments offset the deficit in the consolidated budgets of the Roman Curia and Vatican communications outlets to help the Vatican end the year 37.9 million euros ($41.3 million) in the black.

The Council for the Economy presented the financial statements July 14, and they were published July 16. The statements were prepared by the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See, the Vatican’s budget management office. The statements were “reviewed and verified” by the Secretariat for the Economy, headed by Australian Cardinal George Pell, as well as by a brand new auditing committee of lay experts and an external auditor.

The 2014 budget reports were the first financial statements to follow sweeping new procedures begun under new rules that went into effect March 1, governing the guidance, oversight and control of Vatican financial and administrative activities, and codifying the mission of the council and secretariat for the economy.

The summarized statement released by the Vatican press office July 16 offered much of the same kind of information included in past statements released each year, as the transition to the new procedures is still a “step-by-step” work in progress, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman, told reporters.

However, the one new figure released publicly was all the net assets of the Holy See. Totaling 939 million euros, the amount represents money that had never been included before in the Vatican’s old system of budgeting and reporting.

In an interview in December, Cardinal Pell said the new budgeting and reporting procedures had meant the secretariat discovered “some hundreds of millions of euros were tucked away in particular sectional accounts and did not appear on the balance sheet.”

Father Lombardi explained to reporters the next day that the money did not represent “illegal, illicit or badly managed funds,” just assets being held in numerous administrative offices that were not considered part of the main institutions of the Curia.

For 2014, however, all departments, bodies and foundations of the Holy See were required to report all assets, which totaled 1.1 billion euros, and liabilities, which totaled 222 million euros.

The budget of the Holy See, which is made up of 64 entities, ended 2014 with a deficit of more than 25.6 million euros.

The new reporting and budgeting practices made it difficult to compare figures with past years, the Vatican statement said.

In fact, it said if the new practices had been applied to the 2013 fiscal year, the budget deficit for the Holy See would have much higher — 37.2 million euros, rather than the 24.4 million euros that had been reported. The reduced deficient for 2014, it said, was “largely due to favorable movements in investments held by the Holy See.”

Other sources of income included contributions from dioceses around the world, which gave 21 million euro in 2014, down from 22 million the previous year. The Vatican bank, which donates profits from its investments to the pope to support works of charity and mission around the world, contributed 50 million euros, like past years.

The largest single item in the Holy See budget was personnel. The number of employees stayed relatively the same at 2,880 with total personnel costs being 126.6 million euros, an increase of more than 1 million euros from 2013.

The Vatican City State budget, which includes the income-generating Vatican Museums and Vatican stamp and coin office, ended 2014 with a profit of more than 63.5 million euros, nearly double the previous year’s surplus of 33 million euros.

No personnel costs were given in the summarized report of the 1,930 total staff members who come under the Vatican City State budget.

Budget forecasts, with anticipated revenues and expenditures for the coming year, for the 136 entities under the council and secretariat’s watch suggest “the deficits experienced in recent years are likely to continue in 2015,” the Vatican statement said.

“While rapid progress is being made in implementing reforms requested by the Holy Father, the complete transition” to international accounting standards “is likely to take several years. The 2015 budgets and the 2015 statements are the first important steps.”

“From 2015, the consolidated statements for the Holy See will include the new practices and additional entities, as required under the new financial management policies” in place at the Vatican and according to worldwide standards, it said.

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VATICAN CITY — The Holy See welcomed Iran’s historic nuclear deal and expressed hopes that more future breakthroughs be on the horizon on other issues.

An International Atomic Energy Agency inspector checks the uranium enrichment process inside Iran’s Natanz plant in 2014. The Vatican welcomed the July 14 announcement that Iran would restrict its nuclear program to peaceful purposes, so decades long international sanctions on the nation would be lifted.. (CNS photo/Kazem Ghane, EPA)

Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman, said that “the agreement on the Iranian nuclear program is viewed in a positive light by the Holy See.”

“It constitutes an important outcome of the negotiations carried out so far, although continued efforts and commitment on the part of all involved will be necessary in order for it to bear fruit,” he said in a written statement in response to reporters’ questions July 14.

“It is hoped that those fruits will not be limited to the field of nuclear program, but may indeed extend further,” he said, without specifying what other areas of progress the Vatican hoped to see.

Hours after the deal was announced, the chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on International Justice and Peace also welcomed the agreement in a letter to members of the U.S. Congress.

Bishop Oscar Cantu of Las Cruces, New Mexico, encouraged the lawmakers to “support these efforts to build bridges that foster peace and greater understanding” and said it signaled progress in global nuclear weapons nonproliferation.

“We hope that the full implementation of the agreement will gradually foster an environment in which all parties build mutual confidence and trust so that progress will be made toward greater stability and dialogue in the region,” the letter said. “In that spirit, our committee will continue to urge Congress to endorse the result of these intense negotiations because the alternative leads toward armed conflict, an outcome of profound concern to the church.”

Under the new deal, decades-long sanctions by the United States, European Union and the United Nations eventually would be lifted in exchange for an agreement by Iran to restrict its nuclear program to peaceful purposes.

The negotiations involved Iran and what is often referred to as the “P5+1,” or the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council — China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States —plus Germany.

The U.S. Congress and Iranian authorities would still need to review the agreement.

In January and in April, Pope Francis had expressed hopes that negotiations would end in an agreement. In his Easter message April 5, he said he hoped preliminary talks then underway would “be a definitive step toward a more secure and fraternal world.”

VATICAN CITY — Despite media reports that Pope Francis refused the candidate France proposed as its next ambassador to the Holy See, the French government has yet to receive an official response from the Vatican, said a spokesperson for the French government.

“For the moment, we wait,” said Stephane Le Foll.

During a press briefing April 22 in Paris, Le Foll confirmed that Pope Francis met with the proposed candidate, Laurent Stefanini. However, Le Foll discounted reports claiming the pope did not approve the nomination.

“What is cited in the newspaper is not the official word of the Vatican,” he said, responding to a question from a journalist. “I do not give any credit to the information (about the refusal) you brought up.”

According to the French Catholic news agency I.Media, the pope and Stefanini had a 40-minute private meeting at the Domus Sanctae Marthae April 17, during which they spoke and prayed together.

Since then, however, some media outlets published reports that accuse the Vatican of refusing France’s nomination because Stefanini is homosexual. The press also cited Dr. Bernard Kouchner, a French politician and co-founder of Medecins Sans Frontieres, as reacting to the Vatican’s alleged refusal, describing it as “racism.”

Le Foll told journalists he would not comment on Kouchner’s remarks, adding that as the former French minister of foreign and European affairs, Kouchner “should know in any case, on all of these subjects, to always take many precautions before commenting on information.”

The French government is waiting – “after the normal discussions, the time that is necessary for the study of the candidacy” — for a response from the Vatican, Le Foll said.

International law grants all states, including the Vatican, the right to review all nominations and accept or reject an appointed ambassador. The review process is usually private and states are not obliged to give a reason for refusing a proposed candidate.

Stefanini, currently France’s chief of protocol, is Catholic and worked as the first councilor for the French embassy to the Holy See from 2001 to 2005.

The Vatican press office has declined to comment on Stefanini’s candidacy.

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GENEVA — The Holy See’s permanent observer to the United Nations in Geneva called on the international community to assist Nigeria and neighboring countries to rid the region of Boko Haram insurgency.

“The Holy See urges an international collaborative effort to address this crisis situation with urgency so as to prevent the extension of Boko Haram and other terrorist groups and their strategy of inflicting suffering on local people and to destabilize Africa even further,” Archbishop Silvano Tomasi told a session of the U.N. Human Rights Council April 1.

Nigeria and its neighbors, including Cameroon, Benin, Chad and Niger, have been beset by Boko Haram’s violent campaign to impose Islamic rule in the region. Based in northeastern Nigeria, leaders of the insurgents have claimed credit for a series of bombings and gun attacks on public markets, churches and isolated communities since 2009.

He said the insurgency requires an “urgent and effective response.” Citing Pope Francis in an address to diplomats accredited to the Holy See in January, Archbishop Tomasi called the situation in Nigeria and its neighbors “a scourge which needs to be eradicated, since it strikes all of use, from individual families to the international community.”

The archbishop also expressed concern that Boko Haram’s recent announcement that it was aligning with the Islamic State militant group in Iraq and Syria shows that “such extremist groups are growing like cancer, spreading to other parts of the world.”

“Crimes in the name of religion are never justified. Massacring innocent people in the name of God is not religion but the manipulation of religion for ulterior motives,” the archbishop told the council.

“It appears the time is ripe for the international community to assist in bringing an end to the violence, which has caused numerous civilian victims,” Archbishop Tomasi said. “Before such violations of international human rights and humanitarian laws we cannot afford to have a posture of indifference that would lead to the widening contagion of violence and also set a dangerous precedent of non-action in response to such horrific crimes.”

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VATICAN CITY — In a move reflecting both his drive to reform the Vatican bureaucracy and his oft-stated desire to include laypeople in the leadership of the church, Pope Francis established a new panel, to include almost as many lay members as clerics, to oversee the finances of the Holy See and Vatican City State.

Another new office, to be headed by Cardinal George Pell of Sydney, will implement the panel’s policies.

Cardinal George Pell of Sydney arrives for Pope Francis’ Mass with new cardinals in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican Feb. 23. The Vatican announced Feb. 24 that Pope Francis has appointed Cardinal Pell to head a new Vatican office overseeing Vatican finances. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

The Vatican announced the changes in a statement Feb. 24, explaining they would “enable more formal involvement of senior and experienced experts in financial administration, planning and reporting, and will ensure better use of resources,” particularly for “our works with the poor and marginalized.”

The Council for the Economy will include “eight cardinals and bishops to reflect the universality of the church” and “seven lay experts of different nationalities with strong professional financial experience,” the Vatican said. They will “meet on a regular basis and to consider policies and practices and to prepare and analyze reports on the economic-administrative activities of the Holy See.”

The lay members of the new council will exercise an unprecedented level of responsibility for non-clerics in the Vatican, where the highest offices have always been reserved for cardinals and bishops. The Vatican did not release any names of council members.

Reporting to the council will be the new Secretariat for the Economy, which will exercise “authority over all the economic and administrative activities within the Holy See and the Vatican City State,” including budget making, financial planning, hiring, procurement and the preparation of detailed financial statements.

“I have always recognized the need for the church to be guided by experts in this area and will be pleased to be working with the members of the new Council for the Economy as we approach these tasks,” Cardinal Pell said in a statement released by the Archdiocese of Sydney, which said he would take up his new position at the Vatican “by the end of March.”

Cardinal Pell is a “man who’s got financial things at his fingertips, and he’s a man who’s very decisive, and I think he’s a got a good understanding of how Roman affairs work,” South African Cardinal Wilfred F. Napier of Durban, who sat on one of the advisory panels that reviewed the arrangements before the pope’s decision, told Catholic News Service.

Pope Francis established the council and the secretariat with an apostolic letter given “motu proprio” (on his own initiative), dated Feb. 24, with the title “Fidelis dispensator et prudens” (“Faithful and prudent steward”), a quotation from the Gospel according to St. Luke. The same letter provides for the appointment of an auditor general, “who will be empowered to conduct audits of any agency of the Holy See and Vatican City State at any time.”

The motu proprio makes no mention of the Institute for the Works of Religion, commonly known as the Vatican bank.

The pope acted on recommendations from the Pontifical Commission for Reference on the Economic-Administrative Structure of the Holy See, which he established in July to review accounting practices in Vatican offices and devise strategies for greater fiscal responsibility and transparency.

According to the Vatican, the commission “recommended changes to simplify and consolidate existing management structures and improve coordination and oversight across” the Vatican bureaucracy, and called for a “more formal commitment to adopting accounting standards and generally accepted financial management and reporting practices as well as enhanced internal controls, transparency and governance.”

The recommendations were “considered and endorsed” by the pope’s eight-member advisory Council of Cardinals, which met for its third session Feb. 17-19, and the 15-member Council of Cardinals for the Study of the Organizational and Economic Problems of the Holy See, which met for the last time Feb. 24, since it ceased to exist upon the establishment of the new council.

According to Cardinal Napier, a member of the defunct council, at least some of the prelates on the new panel will be drawn from the former 15-member body.

“Something really to be needed to be done,” Cardinal Napier said of the pope’s actions. “For instance, there was no serious budgeting that you could call budgeting. … It was quite clear that some of the procedures and processes that were in place were not adequate for today’s world.”

The conclave that elected Pope Francis in March 2013 took place amid controversy provoked by the previous year’s “VatiLeaks” of confidential correspondence sensationally documenting corruption and incompetence in various parts of the Vatican bureaucracy.

Among other measures in his first year, Pope Francis established a special commission to investigate the Vatican bank, expanded the scope and enforcement of Vatican City laws against money laundering and the financing of terrorism, and set in motion an overhaul of the church’s central administration, the Roman Curia.

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DUBLIN — Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin welcomed an Irish government decision to reopen a Vatican Embassy just over three years after closing it.

Foreign Affairs Minister Eamon Gilmore announced Jan. 21 that Ireland was preparing to open a scaled-back embassy but gave no date for the reopening.

Gilmore came under sharp criticism in November 2011 when he announced that the embassy would close and a diplomat based in Dublin would represent Ireland at the Vatican.

At the time, the government said the closure was a cost-saving move, a claim rejected by opposition politicians who accused Gilmore of wanting to downgrade relations with the Vatican amid tensions about the church’s handling of allegations of sexual abuse against priests.

The Vatican had no immediate response to the announcement.

Archbishop Martin said that reopening the embassy, although on a smaller scale, was “a very constructive exercise.”

The archbishop, who previously served as a Vatican diplomat, said Pope Francis, from the outset of his pontificate, “has dedicated himself to being a strong voice for fighting poverty.”

The Vatican remains an important place of interchange on questions of global development, Archbishop Martin said, adding that a resident Irish ambassador will enhance relations between the Vatican and Ireland.

The Department of Foreign Affairs said the new mission would be “a scaled-back, one-person embassy with a focus on international development.”

Gilmore said the embassy will “enable Ireland to engage directly with the leadership of Pope Francis on the issues of poverty eradication, hunger and human rights.”

Brendan Smith, spokesman for the opposition Fianna Fail party on foreign affairs, welcomed the move. “The reasons given for closing the embassy in the first instance were completely bogus and it was a mistake,” he said.

“At the time, we pointed out the diplomatic value of having representation at the Holy See and the networking influence it gave us,” he said. “But the Labor Party knew best and pressed ahead with their populist agenda.”

Questions remain about where the diplomatic offices will be housed because the former embassy on Rome’s Janiculum Hill now serves as Ireland’s Italian Embassy.